


What To Do When You Are Dead: A Comprehensive Guide To Your Afterlife

by endofadream



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-09
Updated: 2013-12-09
Packaged: 2018-01-04 03:26:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,466
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075975
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/endofadream/pseuds/endofadream
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After his car careens off of a bridge Kurt is stuck on earth as a spirit and is forced to watch as Blaine slowly falls apart without him. Based around Armor For Sleep's 2005 album What To Do When You Are Dead.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What To Do When You Are Dead: A Comprehensive Guide To Your Afterlife

The piece of paper is frayed and worn thin in places where fingerprints have smeared the ink into blue-black bruises. Fold lines cross like rivers and roads on the page like a map, cutting words into half and crinkling some illegibly in others. Unsure hands shake as the note is pulled from a back pocket for the thousandth time—for the last time. There has been careful work put into this small piece of paper; careful, attentive consideration put into every word. This has to mean everything, the universe, all of the words failed to be said over the past few years.

Another tear slips from Kurt’s eye as he stands over the bed. He looks at Blaine’s peaceful, sleeping form, reaches out a hand to stroke back loose hair fallen over his forehead; Blaine sighs, shifts, and his lips move up into something like a ghost of a smile. Kurt knows this is for the best, knows all the pain he’s caused Blaine and knows that it needs to stop before it balloons into something greater and irrevocable.

(Though it could be argued that what he’s about to do is so much worse.)

He fingers the note again, tracing the outlines and rips that he’s grown to know so well, before gently placing it on his still-warm pillow on the other side of the bed.

Kurt’s voice cracks as he says, “I love you,”one last time.

Turns and thinks, _it should have been said more_.

\----

There’s no going back as the front end of Kurt’s car crashes through the guardrail and careens over the edge. He has a split second of utter panic, of _why did I do this, oh god why_ , his eyes wide as he flies through the air. The unending blackness of the water below comes up closer and closer as the moment drags on, too-quick and too-slow all at the same time.

Everything suspended in a fraction of a second.

The flashback thing is true, because as he smashes forward onto the steering wheel with a sharp pain he sees every memory he’s ever had playing like it’s being fast-forwarded, colorful little snippets and warm memories and familiar laughter and eyes the color of warm whiskey that he doesn’t think he’ll ever forget.

He knows, then, that he’s fucked up, and last-minute regret and panic rush up like the water, fast and compressing and dooming. The seatbelt holds tight, and Kurt’s fingers, frozen and stiff with that all-consuming panic, can’t seem to work it.

_Why did I do this, oh god why this wasn’t what I wanted I thought it would be easier_ —

Kurt’s thoughts racing, fast-fast-fast like a horse thundering down the track.

— _oh god Blaine, I’m so sorry. Sorry sorry sorry sorry—_

Time is running out as the water gets darker, begins to fill the car with an icy coldness as his headlights finally sputter and give out. There’s a muffled silence around him, pressing in-in-in, and Kurt swallows hard, whips his head back and forth as the water presses around him on all sides of his car.

It’s eerily silent.

Then, the glass of the windows finally cracks with a sharp sound, smashing open with the force of the water pressure as he sinks deeper, darker.

Seeping cold and extreme panic are the last things he remembers.

He swallows a mouthful of water as he tries to scream.

\----

Blaine wakes up in his own panic, chest heaving and eyes wide in the darkness; he’s sucking in lungfuls of air like he hasn’t breathed in years. He closes his eyes tightly and a tear trickles out from under one eyelid. “Shit,” he breathes. He clenches at the sheets unconsciously for a few minutes before he calms down enough to think, his heart rate slowly returning to normal.

The nightmare had been so _real._ Kurt had gone off the edge of a bridge and Blaine was there, watching it all, completely helpless. His feet had been frozen to the spot and his mouth was glued shut, though the words had piled up and piled up until he was afraid he was going to explode—then it was lifted, he could speak and move again, and he’d shouted Kurt’s name and ran to the edge. He had gone to the gap in the guardrail, looked over through the twisted metal and saw the ripples splaying out over the river.

Ripples, but no car.

"Kurt," Blaine says shakily, twisting his body to face the opposite side of the bed, wanting to forget everything in the familiar scent and warmth of Kurt’s body. He creases his brow when he sees that the bed is empty, feels his heart jump unpleasantly when he runs his hand over the creased bedding and feels how cold it is. He looks up towards the headboard, finds the note carefully centered on Kurt’s pillow, and he stares before cautiously picking it up. He tenderly unfolds it as if it’s going to disappear in a cloud of smoke at any moment.

Blaine shakes his head as his eyes fly over the words, says, “No, no,” in a tiny, panicked voice, and throws it back onto the bed, like it’s burning hot and impossible to hold. He gets up and runs out of the apartment, goes down to the parking garage in just his boxers with his heart pounding, pounding, his mind begging for this to be a dream, to be _not real_.

He rushes to where Kurt’s car is normally parked, his bare feet cold on the concrete, and when he gets there the space is empty, an ominous free spot that can only mean that Blaine hadn’t truly been dreaming. He opens his mouth but no sound comes out, tries to breathe and the breaths get lodged in his throat. It’s a nightmare but he’s _not dreaming_.

"Kurt!" he screams, his words echoing in the harsh cracking and crashing inside his chest. He drops to his knees on the cold pavement, shoulders slumping in as he begins to sob.

\----

_Dear Blaine,_

_I love you. You know I do. But I…I know I’ve let you down in so many ways over the past few years. I know I can’t hold you back from what you really want to do like I have been since I let those people run my life, so I’m freeing you. After tonight you can do whatever, because I’ll be gone. Don’t think of it as your fault, because it’s not. It never was and it never could be. Since high school, since the day that we met by chance while I was spying on the Warblers and I knew I was in love the moment our eyes met and I asked you a silly question—you’ve been the best thing in the world for me, and I don’t know how to live without you. And maybe that’s why I’m doing this now, like this, because I’m scared to mess this up and lose you._

_I love you. Forever. And I’m sorry for what I’m going to do to you, but I feel like I’m suffocating every day and I’m just so tired of not being able to get a proper breath of air. I’m going to miss you more than you could ever know, baby, and maybe someday you can forgive me. I hope you can. I’ll be waiting._

_xo Kurt_

_\----_

When Kurt wakes up on the bank of the river he blinks a few times to make sure he really _is_ up, that this isn’t some memory or dream or something else completely fabricated. He doesn’t feel anything even though the waves of the shore are lapping hungrily at his ankles—waves that he thinks, tries to remember, and were icy cold before. The moon rests in the sky, full and silvery yellow, the same one—is it? Everything is fuzzy and disjointed, memories like clouds and wisps of smoke in his hand as he tries desperately to latch onto them—as when his car sank down. It’s quiet.

He doesn’t feel any pain, any sadness, any _guilt_. It’s like his slate has been wiped clean, like he’s been born anew. His chest doesn’t ache with the need to breathe. He doesn’t swallow. When he blinks it’s purely out of reflex, not need.

There’s no burn from where the seatbelt cut into his chest, no crushed ribs or flooded lungs.

His body feels lightweight when he pushes himself off the ground. The sand should be gritty against his palms, should dig into his skin, but it doesn’t. It’s like he doesn’t exist.

Like he’s a ghost.

He blinks again.

\----

Blaine tells himself as he stands in the threshold on the room that he needs to do this, that it’s for the best. His chest still aches, like he can’t breathe. His heart feels fragmented, splintering as it falls in pieces down to his stomach, trickles through the cracks in his very existence that used to hold bits of Kurt’s soul.

It’s been a month, and still Blaine hasn’t gone through Kurt’s things. Their clothes are still intermingled. Two toothbrushes are in the ceramic holder on the sink. The voicemail is unchanged; the parking spot in the garage still paid for even though Kurt was the one who’d owned a car, not Blaine. And now Kurt’s car is sitting in a junkyard, rusting and wrecked and too painful for Blaine to even remember.

Blaine steps into the room, heads towards the closet and opens it. He stops, then, staring at their clothes, their ties, socks and shoes and jackets and pants. Blaine reaches out and takes a hold of a long-sleeve shirt: it’s a thick sweater, one of Kurt’s favorites. Just touching it brings back the sensory memory of cold winter nights; them snuggled up on the couch and this very sweater warm against Blaine’s cheek.

Thinking back to these times, Blaine tries to come up with some reason _why_ Kurt would do this, but all he recalls is a happy man, always smiling and laughing and eager to love. it makes all of this that much harder, that much more difficult to swallow, because these unanswered questions pile up and pile up until Blaine is left alone and suffocating.

He lets go of the sweater and sinks down to the ground, crossing his legs and resting his elbows on his knees. He lowers his head, closes his eyes and concentrates on his breathing, like his therapist had told him to. Static fuzzes at the edges of his vision, blacks it out and rings in his ears. This happens too often, too intensely, and it’s all Blaine can do to grab something and hold on.

_In, out. In, out._

_Kurt, where are you? Why did you leave me?_

_…What did I do wrong?_

_\----_

This time when Kurt comes around he’s not on the shore anymore. He doesn’t really know _where_ he is, or when, just that it’s sometime in the late afternoon, the sun dipping below the horizon and casting long shadows on the ground. He doesn’t remember anything between last night and now. When he inhales he doesn’t smell the chill in the air or the leaves or the grass. Everything looks different, somehow, in ways that Kurt can’t begin to explain. Standing here, the sun shining down brightly on him, Kurt feels like something has shifted just out of place, just enough to shake his foothold on the ground.

Kurt looks around and sees that it’s a cemetery. He’s not sure how he got here or why—he remembers floating, remembers blinking and pressing-pressing blackness. Where he’s standing, though, is fresh dirt, piled high and patted down. He stoops down to sift it through his fingers but he finds that he can’t touch it no matter how many times he tries; every time his fingers sink through, transparent. He swivels, frustrated, and looks at the headstone, crying out and stumbling back when he sees that it’s _him_ , that it’s his name carved into the gray granite.

He’s standing on his own grave.

Next to the marble headstone there’s a note, small and folded and written on yellow paper. Kurt reaches down, surprised when his fingers make contact with it. He tenderly unfolds it, not sure if it’s real—hell, he doesn’t know of _any_ of this is real.

The five words are written in familiar slanted, scrawled script, a hand that Kurt would know anywhere.

_It was always my fault_.

He may not feel guilt but he feels regret, heavy like an anchor and dragging him down. And just like that the sky clouds up, gloomy gray bubbling like stained cotton balls on the horizon, and there’s a faint boom of thunder far-off; fat raindrops begin pelting his body, ones that should be cold but have no effect on him whatsoever. He’s numb. He’s a ghost.

He doesn’t know what to do.

\----

When Kurt finally gets control over his body it’s been days, weeks even—time is irrelevant, now, reduced to just a word, and it makes Kurt realize just how trivial being alive (what he can remember of it) was. Then, everything had a schedule, was run and dictated by the tick of the clock. Now time is meaningless: everything just _is_. Kurt just _is_. The sun rises and sets but he never sees it through the thick overcast of his world. In a way, it’s comforting. In a way, it’s unsettling.

Kurt knows now that by concentrating he can transport from one place to another. He knows that any memories he has of Blaine, or of anyone else, are cracked like broken glass, unobtainable no matter how hard he concentrates. They’re fuzzy like they’re standing on the precipice of being lost forever, and that scares him almost more than anything.

If Kurt loses himself, loses who he _used_ to be, then he’s just…gone. There is no getting him back. Something boils up, then over, inside him, something white-hot and flashing that he thinks might be anger, rage, but no matter how close it gets to the surface it never quite _gets_ there. It builds until Kurt is a simmering mess but it never erupts. It’s beaten down and chased away by that heavy, choking feeling of regret. It leaves him wholly unsatisfied and even more frustrated than when he woke up in this world. More than anything Kurt wants to be alive again, wants to stop missing and regretting and feeling-but-not-feeling the lash of raindrops against his skin.

Anymore, Kurt’s alone in his world.

He misses Blaine, misses what he can remember of their time together even though it feels like he’s swimming through jelly when he tries to conjure up memories. He misses waking up next to Blaine in the morning, misses sleeping next to him every night. He misses kissing him and holding him. He misses being happy.

When Kurt is outside, it rains. When he’s inside it doesn’t. He doesn’t understand this, doesn’t know why—or how—it happens. Maybe it’s because they exist in two different worlds now. Maybe it’s because of what he did to himself. He doesn’t like to think about that; he hates that the only thing that he can remember clearly is his own death. Probably it’s a way to torture him, to show him that what he did was wrong, unforgivable and, most importantly, irreversible.

Kurt misses sun and warmth and everything that he had taken for granted when he was selfishly alive and continuously spiraling downward.

When he gets to the apartment—how he doesn’t really know; Kurt just knows that _home_ is etched as firmly into his brain stem as anything else—he ends up in their bedroom. Clothes are strewn over every inch of the hardwood floor. The sheets are unmade and hanging limply off the bed, the navy blue comforter that Kurt thinks they had picked out together twisted and snarled on the floor. Even in his state of limbo Kurt can _feel_ the stagnant loneliness, heavy and bitter; though he can’t taste or smell the memory of it is on his tongue, in the back of his throat.

In the hallway Kurt hears the soft patter of feet, and a few seconds later Blaine appears in the doorway, looking more tired and gaunt than Kurt—thinks—he remembers. The dark hair he had always so meticulously styled since their high school days (had he?) is longer, unrulier than when Kurt… _died_ —and he shudders to think of that word because it’s too true, too real—and hangs oily around his sallow, tired face.

The nightstand is covered with newspaper articles, a preciously swaying stack that leans impossibly to one side, limp and loose pages fluttering out around the sides. On the very top Kurt sees one, the headline saying that they’ve found his car. The photo is of the police pulling it out of the water, the windows cracked and water spilling from every crevice. From where he stands Kurt can see the ink splotched from tears. It’s his death on cheap wood pulp, blown up in grainy ink for everyone to see. It’s almost amusing, and if Kurt was capable of laughter, even of just simply smiling, he would, because death really _is_ the cruelest irony.

After all, he _had_ always wanted to be famous.

Kurt stands by the corner, unseen, and watches as Blaine collapses on the bed, curling in on himself and looking smaller than he ever has—than Kurt _thinks_ he ever has. Blaine’s hand clutches at the sheets, knuckles white with the skin stretched tight over knobs of bone and the raised, twisting curves of stark blue veins; Kurt can hear the deep breath that he takes, the way it rattles around in his chest like something is loose. The phone rings and rings and rings in a distant room but Blaine doesn’t get up.

The answering machine kicks in, and Kurt’s only half-surprised when he hears that it’s still their old one, their two voices chorusing together to _leave a message_. This is something that he can remember, two voices, a beep, maybe laughter and smiles. Then things get fuzzy again and Kurt has to stop before it all becomes too much.

A familiar female voice comes on the machine, and Kurt sets his jaw, tries his hardest to come up with a whole memory. It takes a few tries, but Kurt finally remembers Rachel. Her face is cracked and distorted and memories of her slip like water Through Kurt’s fingers but the foundation of it is there and it’s enough to ground Kurt to the moment, keep him from floating away like an untethered balloon.

_“Blaine, I’m worried about you. I spoke to Ben and he says that you won’t answer any calls. Apparently, you won’t answer mine either. Please, just…”_ A pause and a heavy sigh. _“We’re all worried about you. You know where I am, Blaine. Please come and talk to me.”_ A click and a dial tone.

Kurt blinks, closes his eyes for three seconds accidentally. When he opens them it’s later and the sun’s coming in low through the window, shading things in reds and blues. Blaine has barely moved. At first Kurt’s afraid that he’s dead, but then he hears Blaine’s voice, broken and whispering and hoarse from lack of use, and it’s scratchy like that bit of static before a record begins to play, weighed down and so sad that something in Kurt’s hollow chest—his heart, maybe—clenches.

"Kurt, I miss you," Blaine says, sniffles. He tugs the sheets up further, hunches even more into himself. "Fuck, I miss you so much. I feel like it’s my fault that you’re gone because I never said anything. I never told you enough how much I love you. _Goddamnit,_ I never did.”

Blaine rolls over and Kurt can see the shine of the tear tracks on his cheeks. Sees how his mouth is pulled into a tight frown, how his eyes are stormy and angry. Blaine says, “I tried to join you but I couldn’t…I couldn’t bring myself to do it.”

Kurt sees the marks now on his wrists from fumbled, half-hearted tries, sees them hazy red and not very deep. Pain is clearly etched onto Blaine’s face as he convulses in a sob. “I couldn’t save you and I couldn’t even bring myself to join you. I’m so pathetic.”

_You’re not!_ Kurt wants to scream. He wants to yell and break things and tell Blaine that he’s not the reason this happened. That he regrets taking his own life and _he’s_ the one who’s so fucking pathetic for doing it. He wants to tell Blaine that it’s not worth it, that if he does what Kurt did then he’s going to be stuck, too. Kurt doesn’t want that—it’s why he’s _here_. He isn’t sure yet if he’s stuck on Earth to watch over Blaine or pine for his old life, but no matter which one it is they’re both still painful.

"Why did you go?" Blaine asks the darkening room quietly, reaching a hand up to scrub at his eyes, smearing the tears that have fallen and gathered. He sniffles again, squeezing them shut like he’s in agony. "Why did you leave me?"

_I had to!_ Kurt wants to yell, and he feels the words beat at the backs of his teeth, feels it all bubble up overwhelming in his chest, but it reaches an impassable dam and remains stuck, just like the rage and anger he felt when he woke up. Kurt desperately wishes that he could reach into his throat and pull those words out, but how much good is talking going to do, anyway, when he’s already dead? _I’m sorry, but I had to!_

Blaine’s eyes dart around the room, like he’s waiting for an answer, and he sighs in resignation when it remains still and quiet. There is so much that Kurt wants to say, things like _I’m miserable without you_ and _don’t believe that it’s better when you leave everything behind_.

Kurt almost wishes that he could feel the white-hot stab of pain, wishes that he could have even an iota of an inkling of what Blaine is going through. He wants to touch Blaine, take away all of the pain. He wants to tell him to move on, but…he also wants to tell him to wait. Because Kurt is still right here, still waiting and still loving somewhere deep down.

Kurt reaches forward and blinks.

\----

When he settles back into real time, night has long since settled heavy over the city and the apartment. Blaine hasn’t moved but his chest rises and falls steadily in sleep, and his eyes are closed as his lashes fan thick and dark across the tops of his sunken cheeks. The scene is so serene, so typical that for a millisecond Kurt almost believes that nothing is wrong.

Then he blinks again.

\----

“Hello?”

_“Elliott said that you haven’t gone into work again.”_

“Rachel, I told you, I need time. This is…it’s not easy.”

_“Blaine, it’s been three months. If you can’t let him go now you’re never going to let him go.”_

“What the fuck do you know, Rachel? You and Ben have been together since college. Kurt and I were together for over seven years. And in case you’ve forgotten, Ben is still _alive_.”

_“Blaine, this isn’t you.”_

“I know. I’m sorry. I just—I don’t know what to do anymore, Rach. Working out his funeral was hard enough. I can’t even go through his stuff yet. Dr. McCarthy says that’s the next step, but I just…”

_“Want to throw up?”_

“Yes.”  
 _“Maybe you need to talk to Kurt’s dad again. I know how much Kurt meant to you, Blaine, but he meant a lot to a lot of other people, too. You aren’t alone, and you know Burt loved you like his own son. I just don’t want you to get hurt. Abby is already so upset, and I think she needs you to help her out. You’re the only one who can because she still doesn’t understand why Kurt isn’t around anymore.”_

“…What if I don’t want to? What if it’s too painful to go every day knowing that I’m alone when I’ve forgotten how to be alone?”

_“You just have to try. It’s all anyone can do. And don’t forget that we’re all here for you—me, Ben, your old friends from college. You aren’t alone.”_

_\----_

Apparently there are a lot of rules to being an ethereal being. After stepping half into a bright patch of sunlight Kurt finds himself transparent and agonizingly paralyzed until the sun sinks. The blinking thing, that he had figured out pretty quickly. Close your eyes for too long and time passes quickly. It’s easy to miss everything when you’re not really there.

The best way to travel is to focus hard on your destination.

_It’s strange_ , Kurt thinks as he floats from place to place undetected minus the occasional animal or passing child _, that time passes so smoothly when you’re not worrying about every second of it_. When his car had crashed through the water it had been January. Now it’s sometime around March, he reasons, if the changing scenery is any indication. Blaine still keeps the newspaper on the bedside table, and every time Kurt visits it looks more worn than before.

He’s been dead for three months, he’d guess. Grass is spouting up over his grave when he visits it a second time, spring tulips and daises pushing their way through the frozen winter soil. He finds another note on his headstone. He reads it, guessing that he can touch the notes because they were left for him with the intention of actually reaching him, and finds that it’s simple, just a few words, but is in no way less powerful.

_I still love you_.

Blaine’s two notes sit side-by-side at the base of Kurt’s headstone, the first one in the first few stages of disintegrating. There are small bouquets of artificial flowers laid out by unknown people, some already fading with sun exposure. A spring wreath is set up on a rusting stand off to the right of the headstone. Kurt puts the note back down, doesn’t stare too long at his grave because it still unnerves him even after all this time.

He feels like screaming at the injustice of it all. At his stupid fucking decision and leaving Blaine behind like the coward he is. He regrets his car going into the water and coming out a few days later with his _body_ still in it, because though they’d said they had found him, the young man reported missing by his boyfriend, it’s not _him_. He’s still around, still existing and thinking and regretting. He regrets making Blaine cry, regrets making him never move on because Kurt _knows_ he won’t. What he remembers of Blaine aren’t really memories but emotions: Blaine is a dedicated, devoted man and they had been in love. The odds of him moving on are about as likely as the odds of Kurt moving on.

It’s raining again today, Kurt notices with a glance up at the sky. It falls on his face, splatters over his eyelashes and nose and lips. He opens his mouth but doesn’t taste it, doesn’t feel it. For the first time, he doesn’t want to.

\----

"You were right," Kurt says one night when he’s hovering in his old apartment, Blaine sitting at the kitchen table looking thin and forlorn, like he’s wasting away before Kurt’s very eyes. "None of those people were ever my friends. I was living a lie." Kurt recalls twisted-face visions of people, people he’d thought he’d known, people whose veiled insults he’d tried to ignore until they’d burrowed like a parasite under his skin and affected his brain with their poison.

He gives a hollow laugh that isn’t really a laugh at all but rather an escape of noise and reaches for a half-empty glass of what he assumes is brandy that he knows he won’t be able to grasp. His fingers slip through it like _it’s_ the thing that’s not really there, and that ignites something kindling deep inside of him, its wick lighting with a spark of fire. He can feel it, that dam about to break, can feel the burgeoning rush of a flood. “But I won’t fall for it next time.”

He feels anger begin to bubble up inside as he says, “You know why, Blaine?”

Blaine remains as unaware and unresponsive as ever, chin on his hand and his eyes eerily blank as he stares at the floor. There are dishes, unwashed, in the sink, and Blaine’s sweater is rumpled after being worn for the third time this week. The anger and energy boil over and Kurt can suddenly feel the glass in his fingers, can feel the weight against his palm, slick and cool and so very there. He clenches at it like it’s going to make everything right again.

"I won’t fall for it again because I’m _dead_!” he screams as he throws the glass as hard as he can.

In real time—as the glass crashes to the wall on the other side of the apartment in Kurt’s time, shattering and spraying liquid everywhere—the glass moves a few feet from the desk before falling to the hardwood floor and shattering there, dark liquid seeping around the shards.

Blaine immediately jumps out of his chair, knocking it over where it falls with a floor-shaking _thump_ , and scrambles back until he’s pressed as close as he can get against the wall. His eyes are round and unblinking and his breaths come in short staccato pants through his nose as he presses his fist hard to his mouth like he’s trying not to scream. He looks for a few seconds like he wants to say something, but the want comes and goes, like it’s too hard for him to think of the correct words.

He’s terrified, but also mystified and hopeful.

Kurt’s still fuming, still angry enough that he knows he could touch the coaster that the glass had been resting on and throw it to join the glass and brandy on the floor. He doesn’t, choosing instead to gauge out Blaine’s reaction.

Finally, what seems like minutes later, Blaine says in a timid, hopeful voice, “…Kurt?”

"I’m here," Kurt replies in a soft, choked whisper, but his answer is unheard.

Blaine swallows, licks his lips and opens his mouth before pausing, drawing in a deep breath instead. His eyes are ringed dark, sunken, but there’s a spark in them again, something that suggests long-forgotten life. “Kurt, if—if you’re here, I…I still love you.”

"I know," Kurt says softly, and his throat is tight and painful even though he knows he can’t cry anymore. "I love you, too."

Blaine reaches out and Kurt reaches out. He imagines the warm feel of skin-on-skin, the familiar threading of Blaine’s fingers between his, the security of being held; it’s one of the few sensory memories he’s managed to retain over time. He imagines some fairytale ending where they touch and suddenly he becomes visible and they’re both crying and laughing and it’s all finally okay. He imagines a Hollywood ending, where the credits roll and the audience sighs.

Kurt doesn’t touch anything. His hand goes straight through Blaine’s like it’s not there, tangible becoming intangible, but he doesn’t miss Blaine’s shiver, how he retracts his hand as quick as possible and tears well up in his wide, wide eyes and he clenches and unclenches his hand, staring at his fingers like he’s never seen them before.

Maybe it’s a start.

\----

Blaine stands unmoving, barely daring to breathe. His ears still ring with the thud of his chair, the shatter of the glass. His apartment is as empty as it’s been, but now Blaine feels… _something_. He doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t know how to react, but there’s a spark of something like hope in his heart. He’s never believed in ghosts before, but now….

When Blaine speaks he gets no answer, but that’s almost okay. He doesn’t need one, at least not yet. The dark gray haze that’s been stifling and suffocating and clawing at the edges of his vision for months now begins to recede. He recalls Burt’s words about strength, moving on, courage. That last one had made Blaine smile for reasons he’d never explain to anyone else. Courage had been what had gotten him and Kurt together—then just high school kids, boys too afraid to begin a relationship in small-town Ohio but never regretting a second of it once they did—and what had gotten them both settled comfortably in the city. Courage had been their word, their safeguard.

Blaine regrets all of the things he might have missed, but maybe there’s time still to apologize. And maybe there’s a set of ears still waiting to hear it.

\----

Kurt’s main reason for being, well, _dead_ is that once he had moved to New York the summer after his high school graduation he had quickly discovered how cutthroat everything in the city was. Being a small-town kid from Ohio he had never really been fully exposed to the world of “thin is beauty,” a prevalent motif in his new home and among his new shallow fashion-major friends.

He had never expected to fall so deep into that pit that he could never dig himself out. And without Blaine for that first year he’d been leaning and relying heavily on those new friends to help him out. Everything they did, Kurt did, and if that included a few pills every once awhile, Kurt took them. Blaine moving up there a year later after graduating high school had merely lessened the hold.

Kurt had gotten into the wrong group of friends, ones who were already gone, taking laxatives and diet pills, binging and purging and not eating and they looked so _good_ and Kurt felt so average and fat next to them that in no time his mindset was jutting hipbones and prominent collarbones. It never helped that Blaine was always naturally thin, naturally trimmed and toned with a tiny waist and enviable arms and thighs. Kurt could never stem his jealousy, could never silence that voice telling him that he needed to look like that, too. In the fashion world, even for just a budding designer, there is no room for pockets of fat.

He stopped eating.

Blaine never noticed.

He lost weight.

Blaine still never noticed.

In the end, Kurt couldn’t handle it anymore.

\----

"I always noticed, you know," Blaine says late one night when Kurt is hovering unbeknownst in the corner of their bedroom. It’s like Blaine can feel the unrest in the air, like he’s still reading Kurt’s mind even when Kurt’s gone. Blaine has been talking a lot more recently, and Kurt likes to believe that he knows—doesn’t just hope—that he isn’t alone and hasn’t been this whole time. "I noticed the moment you stopped eating. But I thought it was stress. I knew how…how hard college was for you. For us." He sniffles and draws the back of a hand across his eyes. "I didn’t want you lose you. But look where that got me."

Blaine draws his knees up to his chest, hooking his chin over them and staring unseeing at the wall next to Kurt. “I pushed you away because…because I didn’t want to deal with the reality of the situation. I always thought that you were stronger than that, but I guess I made it all up in my head.” He gives a humorless laugh; a sharp, quick bark of a noise. “It’s over now, though. We both fucked up.”

Kurt doesn’t feel much anymore except regret, doesn’t know how to keep _track_ of things anymore because he’s been dead, been in this horrible limbo, for far too long. He watches as Blaine slowly and steadily wastes away and if Kurt could he’d slap him, yell at him to stop being so dramatic and to just fucking _move on with your life_.

He knows the thoughts are for naught because no one can see him.

He knows that if he were in Blaine’s place he’d be doing the same thing.

They’re both weak. Maybe this was for the better.

\----

Rachel had met Ben at NYU her junior year of college; five years later finds them with a kid (a surprise) and their wedding in a few months. Kurt was going to be the best man at Ben and Rachel’s insistence.

They’re great, amazing people. Whenever Kurt tries to remember college Ben and Rachel are always there. He knows that some of the things he’s remembering aren’t accurate, or are incompletely—it’s just the same as with memories of Blaine and his past life—what he does manage to hold onto makes him yearn even harder for the life he’d so carelessly thrown away.

Little Abby is three with dark, curly hair and is toddling on unsteady legs around the apartment. Blaine slumps down onto the couch in the same sweatpants-and-v-neck combo he’s been donning for two days now and avoids Ben and Rachel’s sad, piteous looks. He needs to shave, Kurt notices. He also tries not to notice how hollowed Blaine’s cheeks have become.

"Blaine," Rachel eventually says gently, placing a hand on his knee, "it’s been almost two years." Kurt’s eyebrows rise in shock; it’s really been _that_ long? Rachel creases her thick brows, her long dark hair cascading over one shoulder. “Haven’t you…” She stops, worrying her lower lip and looking like she’s carefully choosing her words, and when she speaks again it’s slow, precise, the tone you use specifically when you know what you’re going to say isn’t going to be received well: “There’s no one else?”

The look Blaine gives her is scathing, and Rachel recoils immediately, retracting her hand and sitting up straight. Kurt is mildly impressed; he’d laugh of there was any humor in his existence anymore.

“The only one for me was Kurt,” Blaine snaps, blinking fast to ward off tears. He looks away at the wall, clenches his jaw and works it as he thinks. “Moving on is just…it’s sacrilege.”

Ben says nothing, but Kurt can see the hurt in his eyes, the unasked _why?_ that’s hanging around him. Kurt feels another sharp stab of regret at making someone he’d known for only a few short years hurt this badly; he regrets ever putting Ben, or Rachel, in this situation. They don’t deserve to go through this.

Kurt is so caught up in watching Ben that he doesn’t notice that Abby has waddled her way over to him, her huge brown eyes alight with joy as she squeals “Hi!” in a loud, squeaky voice. Kurt startles where he’s leaning against the wall; he had forgotten that children and animals are the only ones who can see him, and human interaction after so long without is shocking.

Three heads whip her way, three sets of brows crinkled in various forms of confusion at the little girl staring at a wall like it’s the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen. Really, for someone who’s three, it’s not far from the truth, and Rachel almost returns to her grilling of Blaine when Abby says again, “Mommy, look at the pretty angel!”

Kurt is almost flattered at Abby’s words before he realizes that he’s invisible to the three adults in the room. With some difficulty, helped by the horrified, broken look on Blaine’s face, he remembers that Blaine had loved calling him _angel_ when no one else was around.

He’s standing at a blank stretch of cream-colored wall, no pictures in sight for Abby to have possibly been looking at.

He’s still staring at Abby as she reaches out for him—unable to touch, of course—but he hears Blaine’s muffled sobs and sees in his peripheral vision Rachel rush over to grab her daughter’s hand and pull her over toward the chair she had been previously sitting on. Everyone looks a little more uneasy than they had when they arrived.

“Well,” Ben says, his deep voice filling the space, “it isn’t unusual for kids to have overactive imaginations.”

No one says anything else for awhile and Kurt loses his grasp of time.

When he settles back on the ground it’s night and the living room is empty.

Down the hall, Blaine cries.

\----

“Remember two years ago,” Blaine says to the empty bedroom, “when you broke down and cried to me?”

It’s been three days since Abby had commented on something that Blaine had known only she could see, a presence that he’s been feeling for two years now.

The time he’s remembering had been not long before Kurt’s…accident. Even now Blaine refuses to call it what it really is—it brings on the latent panic attacks, the consuming tides of gray hysteria and depression. He’s been oscillating, teetering back and forth for too long. It’s exhausting.

Blaine realizes now the signs he should have paid more attention to, the things he should have noticed. Weight loss. Decreased sex drive. Moodiness and complete withdrawal. He’d been too scared, then, to take it all seriously. Bad things weren’t supposed to happen at their age—things like that just don’t happen.

Kurt had just come home from a dinner with his friends, the group of people that Blaine had never really liked. The moment he’d steeped through the door he threw himself into Blaine’s arms, sobbing. Kurt had never really said what had happened or what was wrong—another sign Blaine blatantly ignored—but had instead said, “I can’t be alone. I need you. Promise me that I’ll never be without your voice in my ears.”

Blaine had promised.

A month later Kurt took the car and careened over the guard rail into the river.

“Now I’m without your voice,” Blaine whispers.

Alone.

\----

“I found my way back,” Kurt answers, a hoarse whisper in reply. In his world the rain lashes gray at the window, smearing the view of the red brick of the neighboring apartment. He doesn’t even wonder by now what the weather in Blaine’s world is like. “I’m right here with you.”

\----

It’s raining outside.

Kurt’s regret has ebbed like the tide and slowly, he’s learning ways not to feel. He sings, sometimes, and he notices how Blaine seems to perk up when he does, how he’ll stop whatever he’s doing and carefully listen, like he can only hear the distant strains of a familiar voice. Kurt wonders if he can, wonders if it’s like a whisper on a breeze or a faint memory. He begins to entertain the idea of them being connected, somehow, something like the red string of fate tethering them together through all this time.

It’s a crazy thought, but isn’t everything now?

As the regret fades more and more with each passing day, staying on the ground is becoming harder. Bright flashes of white will come and go, and Kurt knows without really knowing that his time as a tortured soul is almost up. He can’t hold off heaven’s calling forever. He thinks he’s supposed to be scared, but all he feels is a warm sense of peace.

Gradually it rains less and less. Eventually it becomes a slow, continuous drizzle.

Blaine never gets better, but he never gets worse, either. Kurt thinks he’s going to move on finally, that he’s going to keep only a few pictures of him and Kurt around and find someone else who can bring that smile back to his face and the golden light back to his eyes. Kurt is beginning to believe that he’d been stuck here, his penance for what he’d done, to watch Blaine slowly die before finally moving on with someone else.

_Your plan has backfired_ , Kurt thinks wryly. _I wanted Blaine to move on all along._

Kurt stops singing under the pretense that Blaine needs less noise, less interference in his life. He leaves to visit his grave more frequently, and even though he thinks _I miss you more than you know_ he knows that if Blaine’s beginning to move on, then he should, too. There haven’t been any notes left on his grave for over a year.

He’s back to the apartment for a final, one-sided goodbye when he sees Blaine curled up in a ball on the couch, his heart-wrenching sobs reverberating off the walls as he chokes out, “It’s almost been three years, Kurt. Nearly three years without your smile every morning and your warmth every night, and it’s killing me. I miss you more than you know.”

He echoes Kurt’s thoughts, and suddenly the lights are off and Kurt’s lost again. It rains harder than it has before, and he wonders if he’s going to be stuck like this forever. He deserves it.

\----

Summer has arrived; Kurt can tell from the rain-soaked green leaves. His own rain has returned to a steady downpour again, and when he follows Blaine on his nightly walks aimlessly around the block he finds it weird that Blaine doesn’t get the slightest bit wet even though he knows that they exist in two different worlds now. It’s things like this that he still can’t quite get a grasp on.

Walking at night like this, alone, is a death wish, and if Kurt hadn’t been following Blaine’s every move for three years he’d question his sanity, ask him why he’s risking being mugged by taking these shortcuts and back alleys.

Blaine hasn’t been talking much—it’s almost like he’s retreated into himself—but on these walks he actively talks as if Kurt’s there with him, as if he knows that, though a veil separates them, Kurt’s still as present as he’s ever been.

Blaine tells pointless stories with no beginning and no real ending. He’ll talk about some people he’s just met at work, how he thinks that Kurt isn’t listening but also kind of feels like he is, and Kurt will answer in his own little timeframe, saying things like _Can you please keep talking to me, tell me all about your new friends_ and _I’m listening, of course I am_.

"I hate walking alone," Blaine says one night, hands shoved deep into the pockets of his jeans. "I can’t stand how it feels. It’s like I’m empty, like I’m _truly_ alone.” He draws in a shaky breath and Kurt is pleased to see that his hair is neatly trimmed but still loose and that he appears to have gained some of his weight and color back. Blaine chews on his lower lip for a second before saying, “I really don’t know if you can hear me, Kurt, but you’ll always be it for me. You were my dream come true, sweetie, and I really, really miss you. I wish I knew why you didn’t just _talk_ to me.”

"I am," Kurt whispers. “But you can’t hear me.”

He hates himself dead more than he ever hated himself alive. He resists blinking and instead reaches out, brushing his fingers over the thin sleeve of Blaine’s shirt and pretending that he can feel the fabric underneath his fingertips.

The shudder that it draws from Blaine means that at least one of them feels _something_.

\----

Kurt eventually comes to the conclusion that he is, in fact, stuck here in this purgatory of sorts just for Blaine, to try and help him through the grief. Personally, Kurt thinks he’s doing a pretty lousy job. If this is some kind of heaven test, Kurt is well aware that he’s failed it miserably.

This is _hell_ being unable to do anything but stand on the outside and look in as the man he loved— _loves_ —gradually loses himself to grief. Grief Kurt himself caused because he wasn’t strong enough to pull himself out of his own rut.

The regret has come back stronger than ever and Kurt wishes he could cry, wishes that he wasn’t so goddamn numb about everything else. He wants to get angry and throw things again, things to get Blaine’s attention to _forget_ about him and please find someone else and have a happy life. There is so much out there for Blaine to experience yet. Kurt will understand.

Only, he won’t. He won’t understand and selfishly he doesn’t want Blaine to move on.

For the first time in…days? Months? Years? Kurt blinks and everything fast forwards.

\----

The apartment is empty when he regains his bearings. He doesn’t know how much time has passed because everything looks the same, albeit a little dusty and untouched. He doesn’t think much of it; Blaine was never much of a cleaner, grief-stricken or otherwise.

He entertains himself in Blaine’s absence by looking at the various photos still up in the apartment, photos of a happier time back in Ohio when they were still young and stupid. Kurt still wants to feel the pinch of tears behind his eyelids, just to prove that he’s still a human being, body notwithstanding, but he’s dry and numb, like he has been since he crashed into the river.

He’s just tracing a finger along a photo of them taken a few days before he moved to New York—they’re both smiling with arms slung around each other’s shoulders, sky a bright Ohio blue behind them—when he feels a tap on his shoulder. He jumps at the touch, a foreign feeling that shouldn’t be, and whirls around. His mind blanks at the sight in front of him.

"Excuse me," Blaine says, a warm smile on his face that’s been too, too absent in the two years of following him around like a shadow. He has an ethereal glow to him and Kurt knows without really even knowing what Blaine has done. It should make him angry, should make that regret crescendo and reappear. But it doesn’t. All Kurt feels right now is relief. "Can I ask you a question? I’m new here."

"Blaine," Kurt not-really breathes out. "Oh Jesus, _Blaine_. You didn’t.”

"I love you," is Blaine’s response, so pure and simple that Kurt can’t help but say, "I love you, too, been saying that for _years_ now.” They embrace and it’s like no time at all has passed, and Kurt doesn’t need Blaine to explain anything, not right now when they hold on to each other.

Gradually, gradually it stops raining.

The light comes back and now, Kurt’s not so lost.


End file.
